There are hands-on impressions of Valve's prototype "Steam Box" PCs on
Engadget,
The Seattle Times, and
The Verge, and there are separate articles on the new Steam Controller on
Engadget and
IGN (thanks nin). There are also impressions along the way of the nascent
SteamOS running this all. Here's a bit on the hardware crammed into a box "a
little bigger than an Xbox 360 and smaller than any gaming PC of its
ilk:"

The secret is actually quite simple, it turns out: Valve designed the
case so the parts can breathe individually. The CPU blows air out the top, the
power supply out the side, and the graphics card exhaust out back, and none
share any airspace within the case.

That might sound like common sense, but itís remarkably hard to find a case that
does so while still making it easy to drop components in. Here, the key
component responsible for dividing those three zones is a simple plastic shroud
which unscrews in a jiffy. The box we touched was already surprisingly cool and
quiet, but Valve's still tweaking the design: we saw Valve printing a couple of
the shrouds as we walked through its rapid prototyping lab.

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Lastly, it looks like the prototype controller is 3D printed. See the striations on the button mechanisms? That's pretty cool, and if they could just print up new designs to try out, that gives me hope that the first gen will be solid out of the blocks.